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George Will

Why Democrats are in a stew over “inversions”

Progressives say corporations using inversions are unpatriotic, which is amusing. When the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision stipulated that Americans do not forfeit their First Amendment right to political advocacy when they act together through corporations (including, and especially, incorporated nonprofit advocacy groups), progressives ridiculed the idea that corporations should be treated as people. Now, progressives charge that corporations resorting to inversion are not behaving like patriotic people…

This is the progressive premise in action: Because government provides infrastructure (roads, etc.) affecting everyone, and because government-dispensed money flows everywhere, everything is beholden to the government, and more or less belongs to the government, and should be subordinated to its preferences, which always are for more control of the nation’s wealth. Walgreens retreated, costing its shareholders, employees and customers billions.

Inversions strengthen the U.S. economy by increasing the after-tax profits that U.S. corporations have for investment, by increasing the pool of profits available for the wages of U.S. workers and by making the companies’ U.S. shareholders wealthier. Which is why the sensible corporate tax rate would be zero. This is so because corporations do not pay taxes, they collect them, necessarily passing on the burden as a cost of doing business. And studies suggest that corporations’ workers bear a significant portion of the burden.

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Inversions strengthen the U.S. economy by increasing the after-tax profits that U.S. corporations have for investment,

Yes, but what about the US Government Balance sheet?

Hang the economy, nobody ever hired a thousand bureaucrats with above-market salaries, world-class bennies, tuition forgiveness (“public service,” as if it were the military), 10-30 years for retirement through the power of the exchange of goods and services through the community.

And they certainly never handed out any welfare phones or used EBT cards at Taco Bell because of an uptick in the GDP.

Yes, but what about the US Government Balance sheet?
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HitNRun on August 17, 2014 at 10:00 PM

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The Feds haven’t produced a complete balance sheet in decades and even if they did, ordinary citizens wouldn’t read it… only wonks like you and I would try to make sense of it. On top of that, the Feds have their own sense accounting standards which don’t follow the same kind of rules that private corporations use.
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Otherwise, there would be a hue and cry about more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities which will never be resolved. The crash is coming and a Fed balance sheet would show why, leading to mass disbelief in government politicians and bureaucrats. They should be very scared.

Because government provides infrastructure (roads, etc.) affecting everyone, and because government-dispensed money flows everywhere, everything is beholden to the government, and more or less belongs to the government, and should be subordinated to its preferences, which always are for more control of the nation’s wealth.

Thus conveniently ignoring the fact that the bill for all that infrastructure is footed by the taxpayers, either present or future.

Thus conveniently ignoring the fact that the bill for all that infrastructure is footed by the taxpayers, either present or future.

Bigfoot on August 17, 2014 at 11:38 PM

And taxpayers who have income to tax because of jobs provided by investors and employers.

This is lib-accounting at work. Somehow, the large shop locating somewhere never paid taxes for roads and bridges themselves, and are somehow separate from the means by which the people who paid for that roads and bridges.

Somehow people just have money–because proposing the opposite is saying they are worthless. And people contribute a portion of this money to build infrastructure that draws business to their town.

Of course, even in this scenario, if you build infrastructure to attract businesses, it’s kind of stupid to say that their “subsidized use” isn’t somehow part of the appeal of the deal. Somehow, communities still want businesses to locate there! You would think they wouldn’t want such freeloaders hanging about!

It’s really a chicken-and-egg problem, and only a lack of nuance in Warrenites blocks that from their view. Some employers contributed a significant amount in the construction of the infrastructure. Some look for suitors, providing the sweetest deals–but those are built already. And some grow up in a location, where a private citizen paid some taxes for the roads, then paid rent on some shop location to landlords who paid taxes for the infrastructure. And finally are responsible for being one of the chief sources of income for that area.